Color and Abstraction

How artists use color theory as well as geometric shape, pattern and abstraction to create works of art

Color and Abstraction

Color Theory (Refresher)

Before we start: what is color theory for? Historically, its teaching literature has claimed to provide artists with four broads of knowledge:

• Insight into subtractive color mixing with paints, inks or dyes.

• Prediction of the color context effects produced in colors that are viewed in contrasting surroundings or visual patterns.

• Guidance in the selection of color schemes or color design used in paintings, furnishings and architectural interiors.

• Identification of the relationship between individual colors and ideas or emotions — usually called color symbolism.

Why do artists need to talk about color accurately and clearly? Simply because how we talk about color affects how we

understand color, and how we understand color affects how we identify, manipulate and use colors in our painting.

There are four fundamental categories of color

• Material color is the physical pigment, dye, filter, pigmented or dyed material, or light source that originates the experience of color. Artists very often speak of "mixing different colors" or of "choosing colors for a painting", and what they are talking about is material color (pigments).

• Radiant color is the mixture of light wavelengths emitted by a light source, or transmitted by a filter or other semitransparent medium, or reflected from an opaque material such as paint, ink, dye, or photographic emulsion. This defines color very narrowly, as a physical stimulus independent of any other lights or surfaces around it.

• Visual color is the perception of radiant color in a specific viewing context — usually as a physical surface in a specific place under a specific intensity and color of illumination.

• Conceptual color is color as an abstract concept, a sensory memory, a color label that calls to mind a visual or material color that is not present as a physical exemplar or as a visual perception. It is color defined primarily through language, memory, custom and habit.

Material ColorRadient Color

Visual ColorConceptual Color

AbstractionAbstractionAbstractionAbstractionModern art and various forms of abstraction

Abstraction

CubismIn 1909 Georges Braque’s paintings were described as made of ‘little cubes’. The insult was soon embraced as a name for this new vision of the world.The term cubism described the fragmented image, but could not really convey the perceptual and conceptual aspects of the artists’ practice. Turn-of-the-century scientific and technological advances, such as X-rays and radio-waves that penetrated the fixed surface of matter, made pictorial conventions seem inadequate for capturing modern life. Instead the structures of cubist paintings attempted to represent the complex nature of experience while acknowledging the flat canvasFrom 1909 to 1914, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso developed a detailed visual analysis of reality. They began by unravelling the familiar world about them, depicting still-lives and figures.Though Braque and Picasso did not entirely relinquish reference to the visual world, others recognized cubism as an essential step towards abstract art. When Naum Gabo wrote of ‘The Constructive Idea in Art’ in the 1930s he was forthright: ‘All previous schools in Art have been … merely reformers, Cubism was a revolution.’

Georges Braque

Pablo Picasso

Juan Gris

Marcel DuchampNude Descending Staircase

Geometric Abstraction• Geometric abstraction is a form of abstract art based on

the use of geometric forms sometimes, though not always, placed in non-illusionistic space and combined into non-objective (non-representational) compositions. Throughout 20th-century art historical discourse, critics and artists working within the reductive or pure strains of abstraction have often suggested that geometric abstraction represents the height of a non-objective art practice, which necessarily stresses or calls attention to the root plasticity and two-dimensionality of painting as an artistic medium. Thus, it has been suggested that geometric abstraction might function as a solution to problems concerning the need for modernist painting to reject the illusionistic practices of the past while addressing the inherently two dimensional nature of the picture plane as well as the canvas functioning as its support. Wassily Kandinsky, one of the forerunners of pure non-objective painting, was among the first modern artists to explore this geometric approach in his abstract work. Other examples of pioneer abstractionists such as Kasimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian have also embraced this approach towards abstract painting. Mondrian's painting Composition No. 10, 1939–1942, characterized by primary colors, white ground and black grid lines clearly defined his radical but classical approach to the rectangle. Theo van Doesberg

Piet Mondrian

Robert Medley

Ellsworth Kelly

Frank Stella

Frank Stella

Op ArtThe effects created by op art ranged from the subtle, to the disturbing and disorienting.

Op painting used a framework of purely geometric forms as

the basis for its effects and also drew on color theory and the physiology and psychology of

perception.

Bridget Riley

In the 1980s, following a visit to Egypt, Bridget Riley's work changed significantly. Adopting what she called an 'Egyptian Palette', her work attained a new chromatic intensity. In order to focus on issues of color, she greatly simplified the formal organization of her paintings. Between 1980 and 1985 she reduced her compositions to severe arrangements of vertical stripes, a device which she had used previously between 1967 and 1973. In 1986, Riley's work achieved even greater visual resonance as the result of her adoption of a diagonal compositional format. The composition is first of all worked out on paper in gouache by the artist, and then transferred onto canvas with the help of assistants.Nataraja is an exemplary diagonal stripe painting. The surface is divided vertically and diagonally, creating a multiplicity of discrete areas of color. The complexity of the color relationships is formidable. Many of the colors exist in as many as twenty different shades. The position of each of these elements has been carefully judged in terms of correspondence, contrast and proportion.

Victor Vasarely

Modern Examples

AssignmentFor this assignment, you will be working with a 16” x 20” canvas and using acrylic paint. You will be creating an abstract painting based on one of the examples you just saw, (Cubism, Geometric abstraction, Op Art) or, you may research another form and use that as long as it fits a similar style. Before you begin your painting, you need to do some initial work. The painting must be based on an object or image. This could be an actual, physical object or it could be a image from a magazine. Once you have this image/object, you will determine how you plan on abstracting it. Abstraction can be extreme, meaning the whole object or image change drastically. Or, it can be subtle, meaning that the object or image is recognizable but altered. The type of abstraction should be similar to the types we saw and should be altered using some form of geometric abstraction and have some type of pattern or movement. You will start by sketching out the initial design and alteration of the object/image. You can use design programs to assist you if you prefer. In addition to abstraction of the object, you will also use abstracted colors. You will choose a color pattern using Adobe Color, (google it). You will choose the color combination and pattern based on the color theory we have been working on.

Vocabulary

• Abstraction – begins in reality. Seeks the essence of an object. May be expressed through simplification, stylization, fragmentation, re-assembly, and/or distortion. Refer to artists such as Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, David Hockney, early Wassily Kandinsky

• Non-objective abstraction –Abstraction which does not refer to an object. Refer to artists such as Jackson Pollack, Hans Hoffman, Mark Rothko, later Wassily Kandinsky.

• Texture – refers to the sense of touch. Simulated texture looks like it feels a certain way. Actual texture really does feel a certain way.

• Rhythm – repetition, but not exact as in pattern, of an object. Helps move the eye through an image.

• Movement – refers to the path the eye takes through an image. May be achieved through repetition of line, shape, color, texture.

• Unity – pulls different elements of a composition together. May be achieved with effective movement and rhythm in an image.